EU imposes tariffs on €21 billion of US goods over metals dispute
The European Union approved tariffs targeting approximately €21 billion worth of U.S. goods in retaliation for the 25% duties that President Donald Trump imposed last month on the bloc’s steel and aluminum exports.
A majority of the EU’s 27 member states on Wednesday voted in favour of the penalties, some of which will start to take effect in mid-April, News.Az reports citing foreign media.
The tariffs will target politically sensitive American states and include products such as soybeans from Louisiana, home to House Speaker Mike Johnson, as well as diamonds, agricultural products, poultry and motorcycles.
The move adds to the growing transatlantic trade war, with the US also having applied a universal 20% tariff on nearly all European exports as well as a separate 25% duty on cars and some auto parts. Trump has said he’ll announce additional tariffs on lumber, semiconductor chips and pharmaceutical products. All of Trump’s new tariffs are hitting around €380 billion of EU goods.
Some of the EU tariffs will take effect in mid-April, while another list will be imposed mid-May and a third will start on 1 December, Bloomberg reported earlier. Most of the targeted goods face a 25% tariff level, with a few categories set to face 10% levies.
Trump has repeatedly attacked the EU, the US’s largest trading partner, saying it was formed to “screw” the US and that the bloc’s trade-in-goods surplus is evidence of an unfair relationship. The EU’s trade weighted average tariff rate was 2.7% in 2023, according to World Trade Organization data.
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